Disgrace Of Disgraces: How Did Brazil Get Blown Out?

Last week, after Brazil squeaked out a win against Chile, Simon Kuper wrote a story for us about just how ugly the Brazilian game had become. It's worth a reread this morning, on the heels of the country's national disaster (for Brazilians looking to relive the pain, or Germans the schadenfreude, you can watch all of the goals here).

When you’re covering a World Cup, you work 18 hours a day and start to long for a day without games. When one finally came along, I took a stroll along Copacabana beach in Rio — strictly for research purposes, obviously.

There is so much on Copacabana that bounces more entrancingly than any football, as the Scottish journalist Hugh McIlvanney once wrote, but there were footballs bouncing, too. Walking the length of the beach, you saw what ordinary Brazilians — mostly young men, but also some women — do with a ball.

Mostly, they juggled it in groups, kicking, heading or even shouldering the ball to each other. They did this wonderfully. The only country where I’ve ever seen higher-quality casual football was Cameroon, 20 years ago. But it’s a game that’s about show, not about scoring. Even the few mini-matches I saw on the beach were similar: Almost every pass had to be a lob or backheel. It wasn’t about function. It was the Brazilian idea of the “jogo bonito,” “beautiful football.” It’s the way Brazilians play on beaches, on streets, or in halls (proper grass fields barely exist here).

But the game of Brazil’s national team this World Cup has been neither beautiful nor functional. Whether or not Brazil become world champions, at the top level the tradition of jogo bonito is lost — and Brazil doesn’t seem to have any idea of what to replace it with.

Jogo bonito is more than a style of football. It’s been central to Brazilian national identity. A big country that always had a small role in global affairs earned respect chiefly for the panache — ginga, that typically jaunty Brazilian way of moving — with which it won World Cups.

In today’s team, the only remaining interpreter of jogo bonito is Neymar. He’s not just Brazil’s most effective player, scoring four of their eight goals so far. He also sees himself as the bearer of the folk tradition. When I interviewed him for Red Bulletin magazine in May, he connected his style of football with Brazilian dance. “I think every Brazilian likes to dance,” he said. “Put on some music that gets you in the mood, and a Brazilian might be sitting down, but he’ll always dance a little. I come from a family that loves samba and pagode. I think I have a little Brazilian ginga, something in the hips.”

Neymar’s job isn’t just to win the World Cup. It’s to quote from Brazilian tradition. Against Cameroon, after ensuring victory with his two goals, he began doing sombreros: the lobs over opponents’ heads made famous by Pele in 1958. Neymar’s penalties against Croatia and Chile were both paradinhas, with a slight pause in the run-up — again, quotations from Pele’s oeuvre. Brazilian identity in football hinges on one thin little chap with ginga. That’s particularly worrying since Cameroon tried and Chile nearly succeeded in kicking Neymar out of the game. What if he hadn't recovered in time to face Chile on Friday? Who would have scored the decisive penalty?